Dylan Cease's New Cutter. Jordan Montgomery has Left the Shadows
Dylan Cease, Jordan Montgomery, Reese Olson, JP Sears
Padres Dylan Cease has a new cutter. He throws it 1-3 times per start, mostly to left-handed hitters early in counts when he’s facing them for the 2nd or 3rd time. It’s extremely elevated up-in. It averages 92 mph with 6” vertical break and 3” sweep. Driveline Stuff+ sees it as plus (121) likely because it’s a tick above the average cutter with 2” more drop. Often more velo means less vertical break. He’s also added a sweeper for righties, which has performed well and he’s cut his curveball usage against lefties in half (from 16% to 8%). ✂️
Although he was painting the outer-third yesterday, there seems to be a tendency to pitch inside with his four-seam to righties more in early count situations. Heatmap below shows this. He holds the best peripherals of his career with a 2.19 ERA next to a 2.27 FIP and a 3.31 xFIP. There’s some regression coming on his sub-.200 BABIP, but he’s tracking more like 2022 Cease than 2023 Cease.
DBacks Jordan Montgomery has had a mixed bag of results through his first 4 starts. Main usage change this season: less sinker to right-handed hitters (down 9 percentage points) and more on his death-ball curveball (up 8 percentage points). Sinker results have been rocky in a small sample and his curveball’s ability to generate swing-miss has backed up (swing-miss dipped from 36% to 26%). 🐍
His sinker, curve, and changeup all seem to be in the zone more this year than last. This is backed up by the data, which has his “shadow” rate falling from 38% last year to 32% this year, zone rates on all 3 of those pitches are up too. I’m not particularly worried given he didn’t have a regular spring training and could still be ramping up. I’m skeptical his stuff can live in zone this much with his level of stuff, even with the funky lefty angle he creates. Go back to the shadows, Jordan.
Tigers Reese Olson has been solid over his last 3 starts despite battles with walks: 18 IP, 2 ER, 7 BB, 17 K. I theorized two weeks ago that he would need to lower his sinker location to right-handed hitters and it appears he has done so and is playing with some backdoor locations away from righties. Heatmap below. Always nice to see things I speculate on manifest. 👍
Athletics JP Sears has had an up-and-down 2024. Biggest year-over-year difference is a slash in fastball usage from 48% to 32%. He also dropped 3 mph on both of his breaking balls (slider, sweeper). With the lower breaking ball velo, both picked up 5”+ sweep compared to last year. He’s leaned heavily on the sweeper, jumping the usage from 13% to 30%. The pitch has not performed well from a whiff standpoint, posting a sub-8% swinging-strike rate to righties, nearly half that of the average sweeper. The xSLG on the pitch is over .400 as well, which isn’t bad considering the xSLG on his four-seam is over .500 to righties. 🤷♂️
Sears is one of the rare pitchers who drops his slot by ~6” to get to any of his non-fastball pitches. This is substantial. I’ve wondered whether he’s a candidate for a complete mix overhaul. No sweeper, or only to lefties. Go to splitter or raise changeup release to match fastball. Give him a mid-80s bullet slider, again from a comparable fastball release, and see what happens. Driveline thinks the overall Stuff+ here is an 88 and he’s got average command. I get the results have never been putrid, but the baseline fastball traits are good enough (good carry from an ultra-low release) that there has to be some untapped potential here in finding a more effective breaker.